crack the shutters
by her-eyes-fiery-pinpricks
Summary: So he sits, not pulling away, propping a pillow on his back, and straightening hers. Something escapes her lips, drowsily and almost not even there—"I hate you." This extracts something of a grin from him, and he knows that Amanda never admits her love to him straight out, but through her fits and sobs and tearing to shreds. Because she's fine with breaking in front of him. OS/T


**Oh, God. Another Open Arms.**

**I came up with this last week, and sitting in karate, I thought to myself, "There's no way in Malibog that I'm waiting til after TLOTF to publish this." I mean, I got a couple more Famanda oneshots (I think I'm turning into a Famanda writer. No, seriously. I can't write anything else).**

**But this, it's required. I'm not letting this sit for any while longer.**

**They're 19 maybe. In the middle of OT trouble. I know the plot is weak. I mean, the bulk of it is them making out, that's where I started (lol)…so I needed some point to it. But I'm just gonna let it fly. I'm a big big believer in the ending of this. Like, some people are meant to be in our lives. I don't know about you, but I feel like you all are angels for me that's gonna lead me closer to my final goal. So applying that made me feel all purposeful.**

**I kinda wanna clear this up: This is rated T because of the kissing. I mean, interpret the story the way you want to, but it's a fanfiction that's written cleanly. At least, I wrote it that way. I hope it reads that way.**

**Partially inspired by Garth Brook's "If Tomorrow Never Comes" and Snow Patrol's "Crack the Shutters". And "The Lightning Strike: What if This Storm Ends?" helped me get the kissing. I'm telling you, the minute it hit my ears, I'm like, "AAAAND IT'S A ONESHOT"**

**Crack the Shutters**

There's knocking at his bedroom door.

Finn rocks off the bed. He's alone in the house. He asked his mom to get out of there and go shopping or something, explaining he had Keeper work, never really explaining how he wants to be alone for the next couple hours before he can't stand being awake anymore.

But he's not afraid to answer. He knows her sniffles.

She's biting her bottom lip, fingering the bottom of her hoodie, seemingly holding something back. Then her mouth opens, and she falters continuously, making invisible words.

"Ah…I…I let myself in," and the last of her sounds are attacked by tears, rising in pitch, and then collapsing all together as she literally passes out in his open arms, trembling excessively, releasing horrible sobs and strangled cries that he knows but it's never been this loud and piercing. She cries out like she's just been stabbed, like a tortured animal. But nothing's on his face.

And he just can't take her weight anymore. Carrying her many times before, but her state now adds on twenty unveiling pounds. He guides her over to his bed, where they both sit down. Somehow, they both get to the middle of it, and he's facing her and she's facing him, and all he can think about is how. How, in the universe, is this human being in front of me. How.

He puts his arms around her neck, and with a blank, drained face, still sniffling, she just gazes ahead. Taking interest in everything on him. He lets her. Let her see me one last time.

His thumb finds that spot where his lips met her skin under the brilliance of that Prom night. After pressing it, he comes in for a soft kiss. She lets out that shivering, heavy sigh again, but now it's full of all the excruciating pain and grief and in the world that's called desire. "Do it again, do it again!" she seems to scream, but her words are muddled by the raindrops falling from the sky that's her eyes.

So he comes in closer and the thought that doesn't make him come up for breath is that she's his only, she's his, I'm her's, her and I are one, finally, and that just means that this going to be nothing after tomorrow never comes. Her hands aren't hands, they're snow, and every touch Finn feels like he's icing over then melting. Tears fall onto each other, and they aren't sure whose is whose. He could sit here till he dies and still not be a decimal through the reasons why she's so alluring and bewitching and enthralling and maybe the balance of the earth. Each kiss, right now, for each on the list, couldn't begin to try to attempt that beginning-of-time's long list.

She breaks away, maybe hyperventilating, and slaps his arm. "Say something, I want to hear your voice, darn it!" She adds in a few more words.

He's at a loss. The life is slowly pirouetting away, and so are words. "I just love you so darn much."

"You dork," she says. And she leans in for more.

But Finn's catapulted back into time as her lips overwhelm him, and he's reminded of just a few hours ago, when he was trapped by the villain, put in the cage, suspended over something that he can't understand now because he was so out of it. And the villains decided to let him cross back over to the real world to bid farewell to his friends before the system automatically brings him back over again and drops him and he dies. Then end. There's an end to the never-ending story.

And Philby tried. He tried to take Finn away from the system, that he'll never cross over again. That the minute the OTs expect him to dissolve into view will never come. But Philby couldn't. It nearly killed him to know that he couldn't do it himself, but Finn just said that that's the way things are.

It's worse to have Finn with them all day, rather than the OTs just kill him there. Because through all the goodbye hugs for the guys and all the goodbye kisses for the girls, he knows he's a walking carcass. He saw it on all the Keeper's faces—they're touching a dead man. It's hard to swallow.

But Finn is trying to come to terms with it. Right now, it's especially hard. Knowing that he's leaving his life-sources behind is the worst curse ever.

And at the end of it all he's lost in her hair and they're tangled around each other and she's still shuddering on him, and he couldn't be more broken.

And she make herself at home and pulls away after eternity of being hypnotized by the ceiling fan and somehow puts her hair up and zips off her hoodie and straightens her cami straps and curls up next to him. His arm is still under her, but he doesn't dare pull in away. He strokes her cheek with his other hand, trying to lull her to forgetting that this ever happened so when she wakes up she doesn't know that he's replaced by a body. That she'll always feel his lips on her.

But he has a feeling that she really isn't under. Maybe she's just keeping her eyes shut and waiting for the unreal moment that he relaxes finally into the pillows and the arm under her cracks from her weight and she sits up and howls and bawls and feels the drop of ebony ink sink into her pure white soul and as it floats to the bottom of the water that isn't really there and it clouds and billows, slowly morphing her into an angry, angry girl, because that's all she really is, a girl, a girl who auditioned for adulthood unknowingly and had agony thrust upon too too early, years before she saw the emerald eyes. If all that hasn't happened already.

But he looks at that face, that beautiful face. Somehow the word beautiful has seemed to lose all meaning, because there isn't a moment when she isn't, but there are moments when she's more than that, and she's dazzling and she's magnificent and she's gorgeous and she's a hundred million suns and there's no darn words to describe Amanda Lynn Lockhart because she's so darn flawed and perfect. A fallen angel, on earth. To wreck his life and give it meaning.

So he sits, not pulling away, propping a pillow on his back, and straightening hers. Something escapes her lips, drowsily and almost not even there—"I hate you."

This extracts something of a grin from him, and he knows that Amanda never admits her love to him straight out, but through her fits and sobs and tearing to shreds. Because she's fine with breaking in front of him. That the highest honor you can receive from her. He tells her everyday how she's the time and space contimium. And he gets a nod in return.

They were going to get married. There was never a proposal, never plans, she never even picked out the color scheme of her dress of her sisters' dresses. Because it always was going to happen, they decided it the night after they killed Chernabog. Eighteen years old, he said to her, "When are we gonna do it?" and she responded with the twinkle that's been gone for a while, "Eventually."

He supposed_ eventually_ ends for everybody, and everybody dies, and it's talked about in science class, but you never think it's gonna happen to you. Now it's happening, something no one ever thinks as a _now_ but a _when_. Tenses have changed now, and he's not used to it, but he knows he'll never get used to it, because he'll never get to.

This is a silent prayer, even though prayer has seemed hopeless, because he never receives an answer, and he can't have the time to wait for it to fly to him "in a mysterious way"—_let Amanda live on_. Because he knows there's nothing special about Lawrence Finnegan Whitman, but she swears on it, and after the special slips away, and he's a corpse, she'll be a breathing one. Amanda will never shed a tear in the presence of eyes other than his, and that's going to kill her, because not being weak is inhuman, because even humans need to die to their old selves and cry because of how darn hard it hurts when it's ripped from your very you. Unless someone intervenes, the shining beauty that is Amanda is killed with Finn.

So he figures he better get to bed before he starts going insane. Sleep will come, somehow.

_Will it sting when I wake up in the flames?_ He wonders. Or will it be by knife. Or poison. Or will I just sleep to death. Will I even know? Am I a dead man now? So was she always an angel and I'm the one who fell in love with the heavenly blessing from Divine? I'd probably get all the fires I possibly could get, but at least she's still asleep at my side.

He shifts his body so he's on his back, no covers, head against a pillow against the backboard, his arm still under her side. He tries to breathe normally. But all that comes out is exhales.

He results to look at her. Tears are still dripping down. But she's not crying anymore. She's lost in something. Maybe she's dreaming of him and her, when times were good and endless. When the youngness was just running out and life was real and alerting and they were _alive_. When she was just pretty, and he was just cute. They will never been just those things again.

God, how he wants to be thirteen again, when his biggest problem was finding a stupid pen. Life was never a question of _if_ back then. He was never thinking, every night, of her. He never lived like this.

How did it all end so fast?

Why...was is all so terrible?

Then, he changes his gaze again, to the finally silent and dry face, and sees through the fog—she's his prayer.

She was the answer. She was the one who solved it all. The angel. Sure, all that had been absolute messes, but it's clear now, and apparently he needed to get to this moment now before death to realize—it all makes sense now. Everything led up to now created this night. Everything. The meaningless, the lost. Everything.

He's probably close to death, because Finn tries to place this divine, complex thought into words, tellable words, but he can't, and that's fine, because no one will hear them. But Finn has a feeling that Amanda knows, because she can understand, and even though she's not an angel literally, she's something pretty darn close to a savior on Earth.

It all comes like a tornado. He's wiped out. And somehow, he had no clue whose control it is, he falls more into the bed, and he rolls over to be right next to her, and takes her hair in his hand, wanting that to be the last thing he feels, and listening to her breathing and sighing and crying out in her dream, wanting that to be the last thing he hears, and looking at the face, her face, wanting that to be the last thing he sees.

The blackness is heavy. It's getting darker. He can't feel anything but complete, swelling pride and joy that's making him cry, ecstatic elatedness that he lived all these beautiful memories and he took part in him, _me, Finn Whitman_! He took part in nature. He was a person. He was a person. He was here to hold her and be hers for a night. Only if for a night.

It's harder to see now. It's harder to see her. The image is maybe burned in his existence. The same crossing over feeling is growing. It's growing. It's the last time he's feeling it, and he thinks it's beautiful..

Maybe he's seeing her open up and watching him go limp and her whispering "I always loved you", or maybe it's a dream. Probably. He can pretend either way. But he finally allows himself to close his eyes.

So this is what it's like to die. Someone was merciful and didn't let him feel the flames. It's only darkness at the moment, but for some reason the darkness is looking extremely bright right now, like someone opened the windows.

**I don't know what to say. I cried, for one. Review, if you don't think it's crap.**


End file.
